Are You Penalizing Your Best Customers, Clients and Patients?

Are You Penalizing Your Best Customers, Clients and Patients?

You’ve built a relationship and now have a long-term loyal customer. Why then would you penalize them by doubling their fees? “Small Business Stacey” shares a real-life example of what happened to “Digital Dave” who was a 10+-year member of a local gym.#SmallBizMarketingWiz #ASmallBizLife

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Here’s the transcript:

This is how you say thank you? Marketing in two minutes or less.

Hey everybody, Small Business Stacey, you know, it really drives me nuts when companies penalize their longest-standing, most loyal customers, clients and patients. These businesses obviously have not read my book. Small Business Marketing Made EZ and are absolutely not following the A-C-T-I-O-N Marketing System, particularly the N for nurture. My husband Dave belongs to the local gym up the street. He’s been going there for years. They know him by name, he goes a few times every week, and then he noticed the other day that the fee in his bank account had gone up significantly, almost doubled. But he never received any notice about the rates going up or anything. So when he went and asked about it, their answer was, oh, you mean when you joined, the salesperson didn’t tell you that after two years the rates go up.

No, nobody told him that. Of course not. Right.

So then the response was, oh, well you didn’t read the small print in the contract. It’s in your contract that after two years we’re going to penalize you for being a loyal customer. I mean, this is ridiculous, right? He is a loyal brand ambassador who can go and tell others and refer and leave great reviews (he actually got literally like 10 other people to join this gym). But instead, this company is penalizing him and focusing more on bringing in new, new, new. So what Dave’s going to do is cancel his membership and there’s a new gym opening up right down the street with actually better, bigger, more facilities, more amenities, and he’ll get a great deal for going there. So this gym lost out on a loyal customer. All they had to do was follow the N (Nuture) in the A-C-T-I-O-N Marketing System and put in some little customer recognition and thank yous along the way.

Maybe when he was there, after 25 visits, he gets some kind of badge or recognition. Maybe after one year, there’s actually not an increase, but decrease in the rates, right? The benefit is the longer you belong to the gym, the more fit you’re going to be. You’re going to feel great about yourself, you’re going to want to tell others. So instead of increasing prices on your most loyal customers, clients and patients, why don’t you turn that on its head and thank them by rewarding them with gifts, maybe even in decreasing the prices. I really want you to think about this because you have a pot of gold there. The last thing you want to do is piss those people off and have them leave. I bet they’re doing that right now. When a new client comes to me, the first thing that I do is look at that pot of gold and put the N for Nurture that relationship. Put those systems in place to make sure the relationships that they’ve already built are not being lost. Leave me a comment below what you think about how they treat a Dave and would you leave? Would you go to another gym? And more importantly, what are you doing to make sure that this doesn’t happen in your business? This is Small Business. Stacey, your Small Biz Marketing Specialist here to help you get your marketing into action and help you become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz. Bye Bye.